بازاریابی برنامه ریزی منابع سازمانی (ERP) و بنگاه های کوچک و متوسط (SME های) ​​ایتالیایی

The growing relevance of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has raised much attention in the academic literature, business practice and media. Current literature and thought are primarily focused on two aspects of this phenomenon: the economic and organizational impact of the adoption of ERPs inside a firm, and the best way to manage that adoption. While these research questions are certainly critical, our aim stands upstream: to explore the marketing activities of ERP vendors, checking if the marketing tenets for BtoB selling are followed or not. The study of suppliers’ marketing approach – rather than adopter’s practices – may explain a good part of success/failure of ERPs diffusion and adoption. We conducted a survey on nearly 150 installations of ERP in Italian SMEs. The results showed that the marketing competencies of vendors are not extensively developed or, if anything, are not fully leveraged. In particular, often vendors are too focused on selling ERP solutions to existing and known customers, refraining from searching for new clients, and therefore failing to explore the extension of the potential market to its fullest. The marketing tenet of relationship is here myopically applied, keeping suppliers too tied to their current customers. A further finding is that few suppliers are willing to involve network partners in the sales stage, preferring to deal with customers by themselves. This is contrary to the dictates of literature that see each BtoB relationship embedded in a network. The implications of our research are that part of ERPs diffusion and success is determined by the marketing abilities of suppliers, rather than low demand or failure in adoption processes by clients. Marketing competencies of suppliers-resellers should be fostered in order to allow ERP producers to really reach their market.

ERP systems have been defined as comprehensive software solutions that integrate organizational processes through shared information and data flows (Shanks and Seddon, 2000). ERP systems, therefore, are marketed as a vehicle for the integration of an enterprise’s core business activities, such as finance, logistics and human resources, and as a means of overcoming problems associated with the so-called “legacy systems”. They are based on developing a common IT infrastructure and common business processes. In the past, many incompatible systems and processes co-existed, especially in large globally distributed corporations, making integration difficult. Our opinion is that ERP systems can play an important part in leveraging organizational competitiveness, by improving the way in which strategically valuable information is produced, shared and managed across functions and locations. ERP systems, therefore, have been strongly promoted, promising improved competitiveness, by increasing productivity, reducing costs and improving decision quality and resource control, thereby enabling a leaner production (Communications of the ACM, 2000). Therefore, firms are motivated to adopt ERP systems in the hope of increasing productivity and efficiency. Gattiker and Goodhue (2000) classify the literature on the ERPs benefits into four categories: (1) improvement of information flow between sub-units through standardization and integration of activities; (2) centralization of administrative activities, such as accounts payable and payroll; (3) reduction of IS maintenance costs and increased ability to deploy new IS functionality; (4) enablement of transformation from inefficient business processes to accepted best-of-practice processes. The authors also showed that firm- and site-specific differences may be critical factors in the outcome of implementation.

The results of this study provide organizations with valuable knowledge that might prompt them to make significant changes in their current ERP-related processes and the acquisition of enterprise packaged software, which in turn could result in substantial savings. It can serve as the basis for the development of or amendment to a formal process policy of complex packaged software acquisition. However, our intent is to first examine the necessary basic attributes of resellers when offering their products to the SME market. A reseller must be able to offer end-to-end business management solutions which address the requirements of the market and must be able to provide its customers with a strong support network necessary to service the client, before and after implementation of the solution.